A furniture shop is already a strategy game.
Queueing, deposits, skilled labor, waste, and the cost of saying yes are systems before a designer arrives.
READ NOTE ↗FIELD NOTES / STUDIO PRACTICE
NOTES FROM MAKING SMALL WORLDS PLAYABLE.
The design practice behind the games: what we notice, what we test, and what we refuse to smooth away.
Specificity is where the mechanics are.
Short essays about finding games inside real work, testing whether a stranger understands a page, and resisting generic design.
What a cold reader needs.
Three questions a project page must answer before atmosphere, backstory, or the designer’s intentions.
READ NOTE ↗Planned notes.
Why a narrator is already a player role; how an ordinary calendar becomes pressure; and when a niche should not be simulated.
The field guide defines the form, explains why specificity changes gameplay, and names the limits. The short printable test is the quickest way to try the idea on your own world.